Creating a Table of Contents in Microsoft Word 2010

Creating a Table of Contents in Microsoft Word 2010: Video

This video shows creating a table of contents in Microsoft Word 2010.

How to Create a Table of Contents in Word 2010: Overview

Word makes it easy to create a table of contents for formal papers or longer documents. The process is fairly simple and straightforward. First, you must mark each title that you want to have appear in your table of contents with one of the designated “Styles” that are available in Word- “Heading 1,” “Heading 2,” or “Heading 3.” You can then have Word automatically collect and display a table of contents based on the text that you have selected. Word will also update and maintain this information should you make editing changes after the table of contents has been created. This can save you hours of revision time when working with long documents.

First you must mark the titles in your document with one of the “Heading” styles listed in the “Styles” section of the “Home” tab in the Ribbon. Note that you can also simply select the text that you want to include in your table of contents, and then click the “Add Text” drop-down button in the “Table of Contents” group on the “References” tab in the Ribbon. Then you can select which of the heading styles to apply from the listing of styles displayed in this button’s drop-down menu.

Start by going through the document and selecting the major, or primary, section titles. Apply the “Heading 1” style to these main titles. They will appear in your table of contents as the main chapter titles.

Next, find the subordinate sections within each primary chapter, and apply the “Heading 2” style to these sections. If you have subordinate lessons within these sections, then you can select those titles and apply the “Heading 3” style to them.

Once you have applied your heading styles to the titles in your document, it is then very easy to create a table of contents based on your selections. Start by clicking into your document in order to place the insertion point where you want your table of contents to appear. Then click the “Table of Contents” button in the “Table of Contents” group on the “References” tab in the Ribbon. Then select the “Insert Table of Contents…” command from the button’s drop-down menu in order to open the “Table of Contents” dialog box and display the “Table of Contents” tab within that dialog box. Here is where you can select the style and appearance of your table of contents.

At the top of this tab, you can see how your table of contents will print in the “Print Preview” section. Below that, you have options for changing the appearance of the printed version of your table of contents. If you don’t want to print page numbers, then click the “Show page numbers” checkbox in order to clear the check from the box. Also, page numbers, if selected, will default to being right-aligned. You can clear the check from the “Right align page numbers” checkbox in order to print the page number immediately after the chapter title. You can then select the desired style of leader tab to connect the chapter titles to the page numbers from the “Tab leader:” drop-down.

To see how your table of contents would appear if published as a web page, look in the “Web Preview” section. If you do not want the titles to appear as hyperlinks in the web page, then you can clear the check from the “Use hyperlinks instead of page numbers” checkbox.

In the “General” section, you can alter the general settings of the table of contents. You can select a different general format for your table of contents by selecting a different choice from the “Formats:” drop-down. If you need to display more than three levels within your table of contents, you can use the “Show levels:” spinner box to enter the number of subordinated levels to display within your table of contents. Note, however, that in addition to changing the levels to display in the table of the contents here, you will also need to format those titles within your document using the additional subordinate heading styles, such as “Heading 4,” Heading 5,” and so on, before they will appear in your table of contents.

Once you have set all of the options for your table of contents, simply click the “OK” button to insert your table of contents. Note that the table of contents is simply a field. Like all fields, you can toggle the display of the field code between the actual table’s contents and the field’s contents by clicking into the table of contents and then pressing “Shift” + “F9” on your keyboard to toggle the view.